For life
by MyNightmaresAreMyDaydreams
Summary: The 007 position is for life. And so when James Bond reaches past the retirement age, he does what any good spy would do and works out all the ways this could go. There are four options. He goes down in a blaze of glory on a mission, but he is felled by a single bullet. Just a man, when it comes down to it. MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH, MENTIONS OF SUICIDE (no actual suicide)


**_A/N:_** _Umm. No idea where this came from. I was thinking about James Bond retiring and I couldn't image a way that would go well._

 ** _Thus, this was born, a character study of a character I barely know for a fandom I'm not it._**

 ** _Disclaimer: Characters and settings etc are not mine. All rights to their respective owners._**

 ** _Warnings: Mentions and suggestions of suicide. Major character death._**

* * *

Everyone knows that 007 is over the official age of retiring for double-oh agents.

It is murmured behind hands belonging to people with cautious, darting eyes at administration. It makes its rounds in Q-Branch memos, quickly deleted by their Quartermaster himself, even as he purses his lips and his brow wrinkles in worry. It is whispered behind locked doors in M's department. It is passed around like some kind of junior school rumour by trainee agents. It is spoken of with almost reverent tones by the other double-ohs. It is noted down on the files of Medical, stared at with raised eyebrows and concerned mutters. It is the cause for many drinking nights amongst the field agents.

Everyone knows it.

Everyone, it seems, except for 007 himself.

The agent still throws himself around like he did when he was in his twenties, dodging bullets and fleeing explosions and withstanding torture like he was fresh out of the navy.

To everyone around him, bar, perhaps, his friends and Medical, he appears like he has never changed, like he isn't even aware of the havoc he has wreaked and is continuing to wreak on his broken, abused body, forcing it to not fail even in its age.

Bond, however, is aware of his age.

He is aware of the creak of his joints as he dodges under the blows of hostiles.  
He is acutely aware of how he used to be able to drink himself under the table and get up and run the next morning whenever he has to try it again for a mission.  
He is painfully aware of how much harder it is to cram more information into his head.  
And he is almost excruciatingly aware that he's ready for retirement.

The only reason he's still on the field is that he couldn't bear to retire.

Like any good agent, he's already broken it down.

He has four options, really. Four ways this can go.

* * *

The first one is to drop the spy business entirely. Leave MI6 with a nice retirement package, 'find a nice guy or gal', and settle down in the countryside somewhere.  
Each time he thinks of that option, he doesn't think he would be able to stand a life like that.

James isn't one for calm and quiet. He loves danger. If he was ever in love with anything (other than Vesper, but he doesn't let himself think about her because it _hurts_ ), it would be the way feels so alive and right and free when he's racing along the knife edge between life and death, adrenaline pumping through his veins and pure elation and euphoria in his blood.

If he was ever addicted to anything, it's that.

The feeling of freefall and the sudden realisation that _this could be it_.

And he thinks – no, he _knows_ – that the withdrawal would kill him.

He knows it would become so easy to slip into the bottle, to drink his life away. To waste himself in melancholy or in a pointless job.

* * *

The second option, he knows, is more likely.

The same thing would happen. He'd retire entirely from MI6, leave it all behind. He'd cruise the world, looking for someone who would make everything feel like it had a purpose, just like his missions did. He's been living with government rules for so long he doesn't think he'll know how to live without knowing what he can break and what he can't.

He also knows that his body will fail him eventually, with all the crazy shit he's asked it to do for him.

He knows that he has a strong moral compass. That drove him to join the navy in the first place.

And he can't turn off his instincts, not without too many bottles of scotch to count.

He'll still do what he does, chasing the adrenaline and the rush and breaking up fights and stoopping rapes and theft.

A small-time vigilante.

If he takes this second option, he'll go out like a back corridor light, flickering a little and then blinking out with nobody noticing. It'll be a street brawl or a fight he'll intervene in, and he won't be fast enough to dodge a knife or a fist. Nobody he cares about will know or notice for months, if not years.

No, he thinks. He's always had a flair for the dramatic. He couldn't stand that, to be the once-trusty blade of MI6 that gets forgotten about until someone picks up his file and looks him up and finds the mortuary report.

* * *

The third option is another one he hates.

He could retire his double-oh position, and go to desk work.

Desk work.

God, he hates the very idea of that.

Pushing paper, pen and keyboard and a lonely small flat to return too at the end of the day. 9 'till 5 hours.

Comfortable.

Safe.

He hates those words, too.

They don't promise fire in his blood or the strangely focusing smell of gunpowder. They don't hold an echo of courage and honour and pain and duty and all the things he has known for all his life, the things he finds worth living for.

No, it option three he will go out the same way as option one; alone and surrounded by empty bottles.

He knows he wouldn't be able to stand it for long, and he isn't too much of a coward or blustering masochist to admit that he'd probably end things himself before a few years were up, no matter how hard his friends from his double-oh job tried to stay in contact with him.

He'd fade away, and "Bond. James Bond," never fades. He burns and he burns and he rages and he's a mass fire of destruction and nothing can put him out, not for long.

Fading would be giving up, giving up to all the people who have tried to kill him themselves but failed.

And James has never conceded before (he swallows memories down like shots of whatever strong alcohol he can get his hands on).

Giving up is not something he'd like to do.

He won't give up.

Not to himself.

Not to his enemies.

Not to his ghosts and his past and the voices he hears in his nightmares.

( _Skyfall burns around him and he laughs and he screams and he cries and_ – okay, he's going to avoid the Psych department even more now)

* * *

And that leaves option four.

He doesn't like option four, not really.

But he knows it is the truest to him, the truest to his job and the people he considers family, truest to the better version of him that died when M, his M, died in his arms.

Option four is what happens.

Option four goes like this.

007 doesn't hand in a resignation notice.

007 ignores murmurs and whispers and concerned glances and _dares_ , just _dares_ , Mallory to fire him.

Bond throws himself into his missions, smiling his broken-many-hearts-but-not-yours-darling-I- _promise_ smile at his marks, ignoring the twinges of his scars, ignoring the way Q's voice hums in disapproval in his ear each move he makes, each time he pushes closer and closer to the edge of the knife.

He loves the adrenaline. He loves how _alive_ he feels.

Each mission, he makes sure he focuses on that.

 _Alive._

He doesn't want to die on his missions.

Not really.

He just want to do his service, his little bit for Queen and country and all the people who have believed in him over the years.

Duty.

Honour.

He doesn't take risks that aren't necessary. He does everything as well as it could be done, success rate as high as ever, amount of equipment returned low as ever.

They have no reason to fire him.

Option four goes like this.

He enjoys everything he has.

He's not farewelling it, not at all.

He's just giving thanks for all the times things have saved his life, all the times that were _this is it_ but weren't, in the end.

Perhaps it's his 'old' age, perhaps it's just the lightning-bolt realisation of his own mortality.

Option four goes like this.

He savours the smoky taste of his finest whiskey.

He laughs in the company of his friends.

He pushes his body and his mind to the limit in the field, and he never fails.

Option four goes like this.

A blaze of glory. A blaze of glory and duty and adrenaline and feeling so alive it may just kill him, every nerve on fire and every muscle alight and every part of him screaming with the true _danger_ , the true _wildness_ of it all.

Option four goes like this.

It's a gun fight.

His missions aren't as long as they used to be, not as complex. He knows that that's M and Moneypenny and Q's way of saying " _enough's enough, Bond._ " Their way of recognising that he couldn't bear to be anywhere else but he almost can't bear to be here too.

All he has to do is extract an agent, one of the up-and-coming young 'uns who is shortlisted for a double-oh spot, should one become available.

It's a gun fight, and he has Q in his ear and his Walther in his hand and a full clip of bullets in the gun and fire in his veins and his very being is singing with it all.

It's a gun fight, and the agent he's extracting got shot.

Not his fault, for once. The man – no, boy – forgot to look behind him and a bullet hit him in the calf as he ducked around a corner, just ahead of Bond in the labyrinthine warehouse.

James has seen enough bullet wounds to know that this one isn't fatal, hasn't even hit the bone, and the boy will be back on his feet in a few weeks if Medical doesn't go too tough on him.

The only problem is now he has to carry the agent back to the evac spot.

In his younger years, no problem.

Now, with adrenaline strengthening his bones and bullets spraying around him, it's only a little bt of a problem.

So up they go, up to the roof and there are guns behind them and 007 shoots the last one and –

Oh, thank god.

The helicopter is there, a stretcher lowered down.

He dumps the agent onto it, gives him a smile and a pat on the back and says "go far, kid," because, well. When he goes out, he want his replacement to be worthy of the number.

The stretcher is going up as he waits for another rope to be lowered down so he can go up too.

He turns to look around, doing another scan of the perimeter like has been so heavily trained into him.

 _You are never safe_.

That's how he spots the hostiles that he missed earlier.

Twelve of them. Semi-automatics and –

Wait.

That's strong enough to take down the helicopter.

The agent inside that helicopter was youngblood, with intel in his brain that could save lives and missions he hadn't started yet that would save even more.

As soon as he realises that, calm slides over him.

It's the calm of adrenaline, the calm of staring down the sniper's scope, the calm before the storm, before the snake bites, the microscopic moment of silence between the click of the trigger and the sound of the gunshot.

"Q," he says, into his earpiece. "Tell them to go."

He can hear Q's worry, hear his frantic, genius, brain trying to work out a way to get Bond of the roof, even though he knows Bond can't take out six fully armed men with very little cover and no backup and the rope can't be lowered any longer. Still. "No, 007," he says. James doesn't comment on the crack in his voice, the crack where friendship and hope and love lived.

"It's the only way. Get the young agent home. Get his intel."

There is a pause, and it's almost like he's about to say something more, but he's not sure what.

"Give him my number." A changing of the guard, if you will. James Bond may go, but the legend of 007 doesn't need to end.

And then, before Q can reply, before he can be ordered to do something else, James tugs out the earpiece and crushes it under his foot. A smile flickers on his face. Another bit of equipment he's never going to return.

He knows this is the end. One man, an old man, much as he tries to fight it, against twelve? Not likely to swing his way. But he has a chance. A slight one. And that is enough for the desperate adrenaline in his blood to keep pumping, keep forcing him forward.

Then he slides back into his calm as the helicopter sees the weaponry that could take it down and begins to lift off. He thinks he can hear shouting, like the young agent didn't want to leave him behind.

Ah well.

This is how it goes.

This is option four.

No other way.

James pulls out a few of the tiny, compact grenades Q gave him to try out. He pelts them at the hostiles and runs to the other side of the building as they explode.

They smell like gunpowder scorch marks, and he almost swears he could taste his scotch.

He's not sure how they haven't seen him and started shooting, yet.

He sticks his head out from behind a crate to fire a few shots, knowing that there is still a chance that he'll get out of this yes.

The adrenaline is pumping through his veins, and his eyesight is almost as sharp as it was years ago.

He feels alive.

This is option four.

James Bond shoots all the hostiles he can see.

They go down.

He doesn't.

James Bond watches through the steadily gathering smoke and flames for any signs of movement, and finds none.

Agent 007 slides out of his hiding spot and begins to race towards the stairwell, hand over his face to stop from breathing in too much smoke.

This is option four.

James Bond doesn't see the final person rise behind him, gun ready, a single act of desperation and pain and adrenaline.

James Bond hears the gunshot as something thuds into his back. He falls forwards.

There are a few things on his brain. He couldn't be sure which was his last one.

"I hope the agent gets back."

"I'm going to kill the bloody bastard who shot me"

"I hope I won't be missed too much."

"Oh well. At least I won't have to retire."

The fall of a hero, a warrior, a good man and a bad one, a friend and, above all, an agent, sounds the same as the fall of any man.

* * *

A millisecond later, the internal biometrics monitor that shows up on Q's computer drops to zero on everything. Q is busy peering a smoke-filled camera feeds to notice until the monitor begins to beep.

A few seconds later, there are tears falling slowly into a cup of earl grey tea.

* * *

Two days later, a young man in Medical with a bandage wrapped around his calf signs papers to enter his contract as 007.

"How long do I hold this position?" he asks the three people in the room, M, Q, and Moneypenny.

They all smile grimly.

It's Q who answers, voice still raw to match Moneypenny's red eyes.

"For life."

* * *

 ** _A/N: Yeah I don't know either. Dark times in my head. Bad family stuff happening. I don't know what's going on up there but this happened._**

 ** _Feel free to comment with what other options there are and what Bond could have done, or how you think 007 would finish his duty._**


End file.
